Rating: 4.5/5
Hoop-Tober | 1/31 | Decades 1/10 | 2010s
Blood paints a nurse named Maud’s face. A dead body lay on a hospital bed in St. Afra’s. Her blood-soaked hands face upward in resignation. Across the ceiling walks a cockroach.
A year has passed. Maud lives in a town resembling Scarborough, with its seaside views and touristy amusements. She closes her window to block out the arguing neighbors, then prays over her tomato soup. She also asks God to watch over her in her next posting as a private nurse.
Forgive my impatience, but I hope you'll reveal your plan for me soon. I can't shake the feeling that you must have saved me for something greater than this.
Her next assignment is live-in palliative care for Amanda Kohl, a 49-year-old American with stage four lymphoma of the spinal cord. Her crooked feet suggest she used to dance. She keeps a lit cigarette in her mouth all day. She is short in her responses but tolerant.
Amanda has Richard over one night, so Maud takes to the streets. She smiles when she finds a homeless man. She offers him some change and a blessing:
May God bless you and never waste your pain.
Maud receives a buzz to return early as Amanda and Richard got too drunk and Amanda is having a hard time with all the liquor. As Maud helps her, Amanda asks about Maud’s past. Maud explains how God changed her life and called her to her current work. She also shares how she hears God’s voice, but more often feels God reward her with warm euphoria when she does something good.
Meanwhile, Amanda feels outside of reality. She thinks about death and what awaits her, if anything at all. Maud promises Amanda that there is more, and God won’t let Amanda fall into oblivion. As Maud leaves Amanda, the lights flicker around her. She ascends the stairs slowly, overcome. She falls over, moaning in ecstasy. Back in her room, Maud pours pebbles on the floor and kneels before the cross she hangs in her room, her knees on the sharp rocks.
God has given Maud her purpose: to save Amanda Kohl’s soul. Maud will have to deal with the people in Amanda’s life who distract her from her noble purpose.
Maud suffers from chronic pain. She associates this pain with God, where the more miserable the pain, the further she is straying from God’s purpose for her. If something offends God, Maud may also experience a nosebleed or more intense menstrual pain. But if God is pleased, he gives Maud almost erotic pleasure. Like many women, Maud hides secrets spelled out in self-inflicted scars. When the physical pain is insufficient, Maud self-inflicts pain to teach and remind her.
My most religious years were 16-20. During that time, I felt bright flashes, like lightning going through my body. My heart would beat so hard I thought it was ripping. I felt an ameliorative warmth at just saying Jesus’ name. I would write pages and pages of prayers, my hands growing weak, the words becoming jumbled. This convinced me that Satan was stopping my hand and that I must persist. I also had the feeling that I needed to beat myself into submission, physically fighting away sinful desires.
I wanted the big things figured out — to feel like I had some control over my life — to silence that loud voice in my head that something was wrong with me. Because if the problem isn’t that I needed God, what could I possibly change?
Unlike Maud, I forged friendships with people, believers or otherwise, which helped ground me and ultimately see that I couldn’t believe what I did anymore. Without those friends, I don’t think Maud and I’s paths would have been all that different. I’m also on medication now, which also does wonders.
Like Love Lies Bleeding, the film lives in Maud’s subjective experience, so everything feels possible — transcendence and complete oblivion.
Morfydd Clark’s performance is pitch-perfect. I felt in lockstep with Maud’s experiences, which made the film physically unbearable in places.
This film has one of the most horrifying last images I’ve seen in a movie.